| Popis: |
The growing demand for rapid, portable, and economical detection methods for environmental analysis has resulted in increasing demands on the portability and miniaturization of analytical instruments. The miniaturization of scientific instruments facilitates analysis in the field of medicine, food, and environment, especially for the under-resourced areas. The gel electrophoresis devices currently available for protein separation are primarily used in laboratories. Miniaturized instruments that can be used for on-site and rapid separation of protein have not yet been reported. In this study, a portable gel electrophoresis device for rapid separation and detection of proteins was developed and manufactured by 3D printing in a laboratory, which was economical, convenient, and quick. First, four kinds of portable gel electrophoresis devices that included three kinds of columnar gel and one slab gel electrophoresis device were designed with computer-aided design software SolidWorks 2017 (Dassault Systemes SE, France); the components including gel tubes, gel plates, and gel electrophoresis tanks were then printed using a 3D printer after optimization of the printing parameters. Then, the performance of the four kinds of gel electrophoresis devices was investigated using prestained protein molecular weight standards. The results showed that the single-channel slab gel electrophoresis design can quickly separate proteins with the best separation efficiency. Moreover, the effect of different separation gel lengths (5, 10, 15, and 20 mm) on protein separation was studied and it was found that 10% separation gels with a length of 5 mm could effectively separate prestained protein molecular weight standards (in the range of 15-250 kD) in 20 minutes. Next, the battery was optimized for the portable GE device and a 25 V lithium battery (70 mm×60 mm×40 mm) was used as the power supply, which could provide a constant voltage of 25 V for 100 hours during gel electrophoresis. Then, the One-Step Blue |
